


It's Not the Destination

by Telperien



Series: BatCat Week 2018 [4]
Category: Batman (Comics), Catwoman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BatCat Week 2018, F/M, Identity Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 02:59:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16589552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telperien/pseuds/Telperien
Summary: Catwoman asked Batman to join her for a vacation in São Paulo before faking her death in Catwoman #94. Canonically he didn't, but what if he did?BatCat Week 2018, Day Seven:Underrated Moment.





	It's Not the Destination

**November 11: Underrated Moment**

_“You can’t deny that there’s always been something between us. Don’t you think it’s time we did something about it?”_

_“We’ve had this conversation before.”_

_“No, we haven’t. We flirt and fight and chase each other across rooftops, but we never talk about the real reason we keep doing this dance over and over again. Maybe it’s time we did. Without the costumes.”_

_“You know that can never happen.”_

_“I don’t expect you to give up your vigilante lifestyle anymore than you can expect me to give up my criminal one, but we owe it to ourselves to find out who we are away from this city. I’m leaving for São Paulo tomorrow night. Come with me. I’m not asking for forever. Just for a little while. Gotham will still be here when you get back.”_

**Catwoman (1993) #94**

Selina was always prepared to run.

It had become instinct, at some point, a couple years ago. She always had more than a few stashes of supplies—food and clothing and money—hidden around the city with fake passports stuffed into the linings of the bags. She’d lost most of them when the Quake hit, but she’d been gradually rebuilding her network of escape routes ever since No Man’s Land ended. She wasn’t nearly as well-prepared as she had been, but she was nearly there.

That was coming in handy right about now, all thanks to their charming mayor.

Daniel Dickerson had to be the stupidest man alive. He was _so stupid._ He had gotten himself into a situation where a singer with more fame than talent was blackmailing him for years with dirty pictures of his wife, after all, and Catwoman had been glad to take up that sacred duty when Jamal Meeks was killed and then pass it along to the Penguin when the time came.

Did Dickerson really think that Catwoman wouldn’t know that he had put a hit out on her? Or that he had hired Deathstroke? She knew who was coming for her within seconds of the down payment, and she’d gotten ready to face him and his daughter/accessory.

Faking her own death was passé at this point. She’d done it so many times that she could do it in her sleep, and maybe next time she would. That could be something new and different. She had already framed herself for her own murder, so she was looking for fresh ideas.

The way she figured it, Selina had only made two genuinely and unnecessarily bad calls in the past few days, though she was sure any other person would disagree with her there.

Her first mistake was writing that letter to Maggie—or sending it, really. Writing it was one thing, but sticking postage on it and putting it in the mailbox was another, much stupider decision. She should have burned it instead. She should have left the situation alone like she had been for years. The last thing she wanted was for Maggie to get dragged into her sister’s mess yet again.

Hopefully Maggie would throw the letter into the fire as soon as she saw the sender. Hopefully she wouldn’t decide to pack her bags and move back to Gotham when she was finally free of that place. But probably not. Maggie was too good of a person to ignore what even Selina could tell was a desperate cry for help.

Her second mistake was Batman. Her oldest, most consistent mistake. Sometimes even Selina herself couldn’t understand what his appeal to her was, but in her more introspective moments she knew exactly what it was: he was her oldest, most reliable friend. Weird, but true. She had ditched Maggie and Holly as soon as they became targets, and she had let Arizona’s family take her back as soon as things got too difficult. The others had all died or become supervillains out for Selina’s blood. Batman, though? He stuck around, and he’d been…

He always _cared._ Weirder, but still true. Whatever happened to Selina, whatever she did, however angry or frustrated she’d made him, she had always known that he would be there if she needed him.

She shouldn’t have drawn him out last night.

Selina ran her brush too ferociously through her hair, distracting herself from her thoughts of the Bat. She had to get into character. A third mistake would be beyond the pale. She pinned her hair into a fake bob, dug through her drawers of makeup until she found the eye shadow and lip liner she rarely ever used, and she put in brown-colored contacts.

And _voila,_ she was another person.

Cassandra Winters arrived early for her flight and sat down in the lounge among the other passengers. She flipped through a fashion magazine out of boredom rather than interest, and she tapped her foot on and off because she hated waiting. She looked no different than any other young, middle-class women who was about to take a flight to Brazil, whether for business or for pleasure. No one in the airport took a second look at her.

No one bothered her at all until someone got it into their head to sit down next to her. A _big_ someone, she knew without looking over. At least six feet and at least two hundred pounds.

 _Deathstroke,_ she thought, and she peeked over the top of the magazine to search the lounge for escape routes and possible weapons. There wasn’t much to work with, but she could handle it. She had gotten out of stickier situations before, and she had already escaped Deathstroke once this week. She could manage twice.

She had barely finished planning Option A before the stranger spoke.

“I upgraded us to first-class,” the man said. His voice was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. “I know you’d rather we be discreet, but people will be curious if I disappear for two weeks without notice. Especially now. This way, it looks like I’m following a flame to São Paulo. No one will find that suspicious.”

_Batman._

She had only told one person in the world about her plans. It had been a foolish whim she’d given into right before Deathstroke came to kill her (or so he thought, but she could outsmart Deathstroke and Mayor Dickerson both without trying). She hadn’t meant to drop a hint like that when she was going to fake her death, but she couldn’t leave Gotham without seeing him one last time.

She hadn’t expected him to take her up on the offer. She hadn’t expected him to realize what she had done, not so soon, at least, but he _was_ the world’s greatest detective.

He was _here._

 _Batman_ was sitting next to her in a dinky airport lounge, and he wasn’t dressed like himself. All it would take was for Selina to turn her head, and she would finally know what Batman looked like without the cape and the cowl. She had waited too many years to know his name. She had wanted to know ever since their first meeting that night at the Roman’s villa.

She didn’t think she could do it.

He cleared his throat. “If you’ve reconsidered your invitation, I can leave,” he said stiffly. “It will be like this never happened. We can go back to the way things were before.”

She swallowed. “I don’t…”

Selina took in a deep breath and turned to face the man she’d loved for longer than she’d ever admit.

She almost reacted to finding _Bruce Wayne_ sitting next to her. She didn’t, though. She was too disciplined to give the game away just because she had received a shock.

“Isn’t that what you _are_ doing?” she asked, her heart pounding. “Chasing after a flame, I mean.”

She had dated Bruce before, years ago, in a ploy to get closer to the lives of the rich and soon-to-be robbed, but she couldn’t have imagined… Had she known then that Batman and Bruce Wayne were one in the same, things would have gone differently. _Very_ differently. She might not have left him. She would have understood his frequent absences and strange injuries, and she could have imagined a world in which he didn’t flinch away from her when she told him about Catwoman.

But he had known who she was, back then. Batman had called Catwoman “Selina,” even in those early days.

Selina had a lot of questions, but she couldn’t ask any of them here. That would have to wait until they were in Brazil and safely holed up in whatever place he thought suitable for Bruce Wayne and his girlfriend. She doubted her subtler choice of accommodations fit the bill now that the tabloids were on the case.

“Not… precisely.” Bruce shook his head. “You were right, Selina. We owe it to ourselves to find out what we are outside of this city. And with everything that’s happened recently… We deserve this.”

He sounded so sure of himself that it made Selina feel faint. “Do we?” she asked.

“We do,” he said.

That was a nice thought.

So much had happened in the past year that thinking about it made her head spin. Ever since the Quake… Selina hadn’t felt in control since that night. She had bounced around from Manhattan to Gotham, from the Cinque Foundation to Mexico, while the world got crazier and crazier, and all she wanted now was _a break._

She hadn’t expected Batman to take her up on the offer she’d thrown out there last night. Maybe if she’d known he was Bruce Wayne, she would have. He hadn’t had an easy year, either, in between the earthquake that destroyed his house and had nearly killed him, that unpleasant affair with Penguin, his disastrous trip to Washington to beg for help, the release of the Arkham prisoners, the division of the city into warzones, _Lex Luthor_ sticking his nose into their affairs, the murder of Commissioner Gordon’s wife…

All that, and it hadn’t been long since his own son’s murder was headline news.

They waited in silence until it was time to board, but once they were safely seated in first class, with enough space between them and the other passengers to think themselves secure, Selina dared reach out and brush her fingers against his wrist. They couldn’t speak openly, not yet, but she wanted to touch him. She wanted to make sure he was really there.

Bruce looked at her curiously, and Selina said, ”I wanted to say… You didn’t have to come with me.” She rubbed her finger against a fine scar on his forearm, artfully covered with makeup that he must have to apply every single day. “You won’t regret it.” She didn’t care what she had to do to fulfill that promise. She would make this worthwhile, for the both of them.

He leaned over and said, “I won’t,” in a grave voice, then he kissed her with such heat she was torn between surrendering completely and remembering how he had kissed her in the ruined Robinson Central Station. _“I need you,”_ he’d said that night. Maybe he’d only meant that he needed her to steal those discs for him, but it hadn’t felt that way.

And wasn’t that always how it was between them? It had never felt the way it really was.

“What are we going to do when we land?” she asked.

Bruce smiled. “We’re going to check into our hotel suite and go to sleep,” he said. “It’s an eight hour flight, Selina. We won’t be up to doing anything else. Not unless we’re attacked by the League of Assassins.”

Selina blinked. “Is that a risk?” It would be typical, somehow, for them to head off a romantic getaway only to spend their entire vacation fighting assassins and their genocidal leader.

“It’s always a risk,” he grumbled.

She took his word for it. The League of Assassins mostly left her alone.

They were silent as the plane took off. Selina still had her fingers resting lightly on his wrist, but he hadn’t said a word about that. He left his hand there, and she left her hand there, and they were just… leaving their hands there. Like it was something they did.

Once the flight attendant delivered Bruce’s ginger ale and Selina’s wine, with a polite reminder that they were always pleased to be of service to Mr. Wayne, who (as it turned out) owned the airline, Selina’s fingers twitched. “What happens _after_ that?” she asked in a low voice. “After we wake up in the hotel.”

Bruce appeared unconcerned. “We might need to go shopping. I packed in something of a rush,” he said dryly.

Selina could stand to get new clothes. The bug-out bag she’d grabbed wasn’t intended for South American use. “And what happens after _that_?” she asked.

She was afraid he wouldn’t get the point again. He’d say something like _we’ll get lunch_ or _we can see the sights_ , and Selina would be left to wonder if this was really the worst idea she’d ever had.

They couldn’t go back to the way things were after this. Selina had invited him along on her escape, and Bruce had accepted and he’d revealed his secret identity to her, and they had changed the rules of the game. This was the way things were from now on, and Selina had no idea what that would mean when they got back to Gotham.

Catwoman couldn’t know Batman’s secret identity. It was absurd to even imagine a universe where she did. But she wasn’t Catwoman anymore, she remembered glumly. She wasn’t even Selina Kyle. She had blown Catwoman up, and she’d thrown Selina Kyle’s dead body from a rooftop in Manhattan. Whoever she was now, that was the woman who’d need to handle the fallout from Catwoman and Selina Kyle’s choices.

Bruce didn’t misunderstand her this time, though. “I have no idea,” he said. He was looking at her with those blue eyes, and she couldn’t help but think, _This is so much better than those white cowl lenses._ “We’re going to have to figure out that one together.”

“Oh,” she said.

Then, “That could be…” she struggled to find the right word “… _fun._ ”

It could be.

They had known each other for years, and in that time, no matter who they were pretending to be at the time, there had always been a degree of… not always _fun,_ not with the kinds of threats they faced on a daily basis, but a degree of excitement and camaraderie that sometimes could feel like fun. When Selina had dated Bruce, there had been a whirl of events and people to keep them entertained, and when Catwoman had been with Batman, there had been the thrill of their nightlife—the adrenaline and the challenge, both intellectual and physical.

And now, with all their cards on the table?

“Fun,” Bruce echoed, smiling. “You’re right. It could be fun.”


End file.
